Bubba Copeland shot himself in front of police on Friday, days after he begged 1819 News not to expose his private life.

    • Bobble9211@sh.itjust.works
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      8 months ago

      Don’t know shit about this person, but 1819 news is a right wing shit hole. I wouldn’t trust these assholes to report the weather.

      It’s just a regular doxing article. Showing the mayor’s cross dressing photos and all the related linked accounts. Completely fucked up without the “public official” exemption for privacy.

  • Birdie@thelemmy.club
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    8 months ago

    Guys, he not only was a Republican, he was a Baptist preacher. He aligned himself with these two LGBTQ hater groups.

    Maybe he joined the GOP and the Baptist denomination in an attempt to shield his lifestyle, but he willingly belonged to these two groups which both actively HATE LGBTQ and condemn his very lifestyle.

    I have a lot of sympathy for people who feel they must disguise their true selves in order to protect themselves…and I respect that he tried to reach out and offer support to others online.

    But I’m hearing some very disturbing ‘rumors’ that he posted hateful, stalking, character assassination of particular people online. And accusations of child porn.

    I’m going to reserve my sympathy for him for now, until the whole truth is known.

    • Flax@feddit.uk
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      8 months ago

      Baptists aren’t a group and don’t necessarily hate LGBTQ people. It’s a low-church movement/denomination within Christianity which is not defined at all by sexuality.

      Some Baptist churches are even gay-affirming.

      • Birdie@thelemmy.club
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        8 months ago

        Of course they’re a group. Each church is comprised of a group of people with like beliefs.

        And while there are Baptist churches that are more friendly to LGBTQ people, there’s a reason this man had to hide who he was from the people in his particular church.

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          8 months ago

          That’s generally a thing with all churches, though.

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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    8 months ago

    He added that it would “not cause my life to change.”

    Well, that was wrong. /s

    Seriously, though… it’s almost as though being a member of a hate-group (conservatism) results in terrible outcomes when you’re on the outs with said group.

  • Nine@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    That’s horrible, poor dude should just have lived his truth. Damn same he felt that this was the only way forward/out.

    • DerisionConsulting@lemmy.ca
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      8 months ago

      The missing part of the story involves him stocking a local woman, and writing erotic fiction about how he was going to murder her and taking over her life.

      Also posting of pictures of children to porn sites.

      https://1819news.com/news/item/to-say-i-was-a-stalker-would-be-a-bit-of-an-understatement-curvy-transgender-smiths-station-mayor-copeland-wrote-fiction-about-murdering-real-life-local-businesswoman-assuming-her-identity

      • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        It’s a really weird situation. … Here we have a conservative who is writing the kind crime novel that conservatives tend to write about trans people that utilizes a bunch of fairly stereotypical transphobic narratives that internally within the trans community would elicit disgust and ridicule and then appearing to act it out.

        While it’s possible they could have been trans themselves this feels a lot more like someone treating the conservative stereotype of trans people as a kink and acting on it. JK Rowling writes this kind of shlock the key difference being she, at least as far as we know, didn’t write it as part of some sort of LARP. This person was in a complicated situation, even if they weren’t trans they were caught doing things the right would look at as definitive evidence as trans and they likely had trans or trans ally commenters telling them that what they were doing was not okay. So you either have a trans hypocrite willing to set their own community on fire because of their subscription to conservative values and tropes or you have a rather stupid conservative secretly treating a trans psychokiller trope as their personal fetish or trying to use it to add realism to fuel their hobby of writing transphobic fiction and got caught by a community that is both extremely transphobic and equally not empathetic to it just being a kink.

        For those who are claiming cognitive dissonance in the audience there are a few things at play.

        • Suicide is a tragedy. Many of us know what the impacts of that are on communities and loved ones. This person did some bad shit but not the sort of thing we would execute someone for doing. This is still a tragedy.

        • In a conservative run world being closeted and driven to suicide is a thing that has happened to generations of trans people who were not this person. It is okay to register that is not something we want to keep or return to. Feeling some empathy for trans people caught in this situation is normal.

        • We don’t really know what this person’s actual situation is but in absence of context they effectively died becoming the sort of bogeyman the right loves to spread. They effectively died making the trope seem more real.

        • Stalking isn’t fucking cool. Neither is writing this kind of shit.

        However you want to feel about this on the spectrum of “fuck this person in particular” to “that poor person, this shouldn’t have happened” this all is valid. But it isn’t hypocrisy, it’s nuance and the right does not fucking understand nuance.

  • thorbot@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    This is really fucking sad. A man who should have been able to express his true self but couldn’t because of the twisted shackles of religion that led to his own death. Fuck religion.

    • PP_BOY_@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      The guy’s “true self” was posting pictures of literal children calling them whores and sluts and writing stories about the children being given forced gender changes to be sold into sex slavery.

      • thorbot@lemmy.world
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        Yes religion twisted him into what he became. I’m not condoning the guys actions, just sad that he ended up where he did because of religions influence. Who knows how he would’ve ended up if he didn’t have all that fucked up shit twisting him. May have still turned out to be a piece of shit

    • SnausagesinaBlanket@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Religion and old beliefs are the destroyer of mankind.

      We don’t need the threat of eternal hell to be good.

      Religion teaches that we are inherently evil and need a God to be good.

  • Nougat@kbin.social
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    8 months ago

    Also a pastor, “shot himself in front of police during a welfare check.” It also appears that his wife was aware and involved with the hobby (not with the suicide), presumably in a supporting way.

    I may disagree very strongly with this guy’s politics, but fuck the assholes who make this shameful.

    @Poutinetown quotes from the article:

    … even though it does not appear [Copeland] had taken any public positions against LGBTQ issues that could be construed as hypocritical.

      • Poutinetown@lemmy.ca
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        8 months ago

        The blog reported that Copeland, a Republican, confirmed that the accounts were run by him, saying they were a “hobby” he used for “getting rid of stress.” 1819 News reported that Copeland asked them to not out him, but they did so anyway, even though it does not appear he had taken any public positions against LGBTQ issues that could be construed as hypocritical.

        • kool_newt@lemm.ee
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          8 months ago

          even though it does not appear he had taken any public positions against LGBTQ issues that could be construed as hypocritical.‘’

          Being GOP and anywhere on the LGBTQIA spectrum is inherently hypocritical.

  • Wahots@pawb.social
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    8 months ago

    What a waste. Regardless of his political affiliations, it’s sad that someone got bullied so hard that they decided to take their own life. It’s what we fight for in the LGBTQ community and beyond- so nobody feels that their life is over if discovered. Nor should it be a big deal, regardless. It’s what we’ve been fighting for since the Lavender Scare, and we’ll keep fighting for a general sense of normalcy for everyday Americans, regardless of political orientation.

  • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    This is a tragedy that should never have happened.

    I’m in rural Georgia. If you want to hold any political office at all, you have to be Republican. That’s just the way it is. There’s a Democratic party, and they run candidates in most elections, but they’re doing pretty good when they get more votes than the Libertarian candidates do. So if you want to change shit or do any good at all, you run as a Republican, and you vote in Republican primaries. At a local level, there are definitely people that are trying to do good things that are Republicans, even though they agree with most or all points of the Democratic party.

    I haven’t seen any indication that this person–and I don’t know how they privately self-identified–was anti-LGBTQ+, aside from their association with the Republican party.

    When you’re in a small town in the south, esp. when you’re involved in small town politics in the south, this kind of thing is a social death sentence. It would likely mean the loss of both of their jobs, and possibly their family.

    They didn’t deserve this.

    No one deserves this.

    The people celebrating their suicide, because they were religious and in local politics as a Republican, should be ashamed of themselves. Trans lives matter, but only as long as they fit in the molds we’ve made for 'em, huh?

    My heart goes out to their family.

    • Lieutenant Liana@startrek.website
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      8 months ago

      The more you “they/them” this guy and conflate this with transphobia, the more you equate men with a crossdressing fetish with trans women. He did not deserve this obviously, and kinks are good and nice, but I am really, really over “allies” who constantly equate crossdressers and fetishists with trans people.

      • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        We simply don’t know, and they aren’t here to tell us because they’re dead. You are assuming that they were a crossdresser and not transgender, despite the fact that they said otherwise in their online activities.

        I’d rather give someone the benefit of the doubt and be wrong.

  • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    8 months ago

    Imagine taking your own life over this shit because your devotion to right wing identity politics supercedes your self-determination.

  • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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    It’s a really weird situation. … Here we have a conservative who is writing the kind crime novel that conservatives tend to write about trans people that utilizes a bunch of fairly stereotypical transphobic narratives that internally within the trans community would elicit disgust and ridicule and then appearing to act it out.

    While it’s possible they could have been trans themselves this feels a lot more like someone treating the conservative stereotype of trans people as a kink and acting on it. JK Rowling writes this kind of shlock the key difference being she, at least as far as we know, didn’t write it as part of some sort of LARP. This person was in a complicated situation, even if they weren’t trans they were caught doing things the right would look at as definitive evidence as trans and they likely had trans or trans ally commenters telling them that what they were doing was not okay. So you either have a trans hypocrite willing to set their own community on fire because of their subscription to conservative values and tropes or you have a rather stupid conservative secretly treating a trans psychokiller trope as their personal fetish or trying to use it to add realism to fuel their hobby of writing transphobic fiction and got caught by a community that is both extremely transphobic and equally not empathetic to it just being a kink.

    For those who are claiming cognitive dissonance in the audience there are a few things at play.

    • Suicide is a tragedy. Many of us know what the impacts of that are on communities and loved ones. This person did some bad shit but not the sort of thing we would execute someone for doing. This is still a tragedy.

    • In a conservative run world being closeted and driven to suicide is a thing that has happened to generations of trans people who were not this person. It is okay to register that is not something we want to keep or return to. Feeling some empathy for trans people caught in this situation is normal.

    • We don’t really know what this person’s actual situation is but in absence of context they effectively died becoming the sort of bogeyman the right loves to spread. They effectively died making the trope seem more real which isn’t great for the trans community particularly regardless of this person’s potential transness.

    • Stalking isn’t fucking cool. Neither is writing this kind of shit.

    However you want to feel about this on the spectrum of “fuck this person in particular” to “that poor person, this shouldn’t have happened” this all is valid. But it isn’t hypocrisy, it’s nuance and the right does not fucking understand nuance.